10 TV Characters Who Got Undeservedly Brutal Deaths

1. Helen Flynn - Spooks

Method Of Death

Face burned in a chip pan, shot in the head.

Why It Was Undeserved

BBC's classic spy show Spooks still boasts one of the most controversial and complained-about death scenes in British TV history.

In only its second episode, main character Helen Flynn (Lisa Faulkner) is murdered by right-wing leader Robert Osbourne (Kevin McNally) in the most horrifying way possible.

When Osbourne doesn't get the intel on MI5 that he desperately needs, he forces Helen's hand into a chip fryer, after which he shoves her head in, burning her face off, and only then does he have one of his henchmen "mercifully" shoot her in the back of the head.

Given that Faulkner was one of the few recognisable cast members at the start of the show, her death was especially jolting, creating an air of unpredictability that pervaded throughout the entire rest of the series.

But many nevertheless complained that the cruelty of the death was fetishistic and over-the-top for a gritty spy series, while the show's creators defended it as an inevitable consequence of dangerous spy work.

Considering that Helen was an appealing new MI5 recruit, her jaw-dropping left-field fate set a high bar for shock value that the show, perhaps thankfully, never got close to ever again.